A short course in history. Good grandfather Korney

March 31 marks the 130th anniversary of the birth of the Russian writer and translator Korney Chukovsky.

Russian and Soviet poet, writer, critic, literary critic, translator Korney Ivanovich Chukovsky (real name Nikolai Ivanovich Korneychukov) was born on March 31 (19 according to the old style) March 1882 in St. Petersburg. Chukovsky's father, St. Petersburg student Emmanuel Levenson, in whose family Chukovsky's mother, peasant woman Ekaterina Korneychukova, was a servant, left her three years after the birth of his son. Together with her son and eldest daughter, she was forced to leave for Odessa.

Nikolai studied at the Odessa gymnasium, but in 1898 he was expelled from the fifth grade, when, according to a special decree (the decree on cooks' children), educational institutions were exempt from children of low origin.

From his youth, Chukovsky led a working life, read a lot, and independently studied English and French.

In 1901, Chukovsky began publishing in the newspaper "Odessa News", where he was brought by an older friend from the gymnasium, later a politician, ideologist of the Zionist movement, Vladimir Jabotinsky.

In 1903-1904, Chukovsky was sent to London as a correspondent for Odessa News. Almost every day he visited the free reading room of the British Museum library, where he read English writers, historians, philosophers, and publicists. This helped the writer subsequently develop his own style, which was later called paradoxical and witty.

Since August 1905, Chukovsky lived in St. Petersburg, collaborated with many St. Petersburg magazines, and organized (with the subsidy of singer Leonid Sobinov) a weekly political satire magazine, Signal. Fedor Sologub, Teffi, Alexander Kuprin were published in the magazine. For his bold cartoons and anti-government poems in four published issues, Chukovsky was arrested and sentenced to six months in prison.

In 1906, he became a permanent contributor to Valery Bryusov's magazine "Scales". From this year, Chukovsky also collaborated with the Niva magazine and the Rech newspaper, where he published critical essays about modern writers, later collected in the books From Chekhov to the Present Day (1908), Critical Stories (1911), and Faces and masks" (1914), "Futurists" (1922).

Since the fall of 1906, Chukovsky settled in Kuokkala (now the village of Repino), where he became close to the artist Ilya Repin and lawyer Anatoly Koni, met Vladimir Korolenko, Alexander Kuprin, Fyodor Chaliapin, Vladimir Mayakovsky, Leonid Andreev, Alexei Tolstoy. Later, Chukovsky spoke about many cultural figures in his memoirs - “Repin. Gorky. Mayakovsky. Bryusov. Memoirs” (1940), “From Memoirs” (1959), “Contemporaries” (1962).

In Kuokkala, the poet translated "Leaves of Grass" by the American poet Walt Whitman (published in 1922), wrote articles on children's literature ("Save the Children" and "God and Child", 1909) and the first fairy tales (almanac "Firebird", 1911 ). An almanac of autographs and drawings was also collected here, reflecting the creative life of several generations of artists - “Chukokkala”, the name of which was invented by Repin.

This humorous handwritten almanac, with creative autographs from Alexander Blok, Zinaida Gippius, Nikolai Gumilyov, Osip Mandelstam, Ilya Repin, as well as writers Arthur Conan Doyle and H.G. Wells, was first published in 1979 in an abridged version.

In February-March 1916, Chukovsky made a second trip to England as part of a delegation of Russian journalists at the invitation of the British government. In the same year, Maxim Gorky invited him to head the children's department of the Parus publishing house. The result of the joint work was the almanac "Yolka", published in 1918.

In the fall of 1917, Korney Chukovsky returned to Petrograd (now St. Petersburg), where he lived until 1938.

In 1918-1924 he was part of the management of the World Literature publishing house.

In 1919, he participated in the creation of the House of Arts and headed its literary department.

In 1921, Chukovsky organized a dacha colony for Petrograd writers and artists in Kholomki (Pskov province), where he “saved his family and himself from hunger,” and took part in the creation of the children’s department of the Epoch publishing house (1924).

In 1924-1925 he worked in the magazine "Russian Contemporary", where his books "Alexander Blok as a Man and a Poet" and "Two Souls of Maxim Gorky" were published.

In Leningrad, Chukovsky published books for children “Crocodile” (published in 1917 under the title “Vanya and the Crocodile”), “Moidodyr” (1923), “Cockroach” (1923), “Tsokotukha Fly” (1924, under the title “Mukhina” wedding"), "Barmaley" (1925), "Aibolit" (1929, under the title "The Adventures of Aibolit") and the book "From Two to Five", which was first published in 1928 under the title "Little Children".

Children's fairy tales became the reason for the persecution of Chukovsky that began in the 1930s, the so-called fight against “Chukovism,” initiated by Nadezhda Krupskaya, the wife of Vladimir Lenin. On February 1, 1928, her article “About K. Chukovsky’s Crocodile” was published in the Pravda newspaper. On March 14, Maxim Gorky spoke in defense of Chukovsky on the pages of Pravda with his “Letter to the Editor.” In December 1929, in the Literary Gazette, Korney Chukovsky publicly renounced his fairy tales and promised to create a collection of “Merry Collective Farms”. He was depressed by the event and after that he could not write for a long time. By his own admission, from that time on he turned from an author to an editor. The campaign of persecution of Chukovsky because of fairy tales was resumed in 1944 and 1946 - critical articles were published about “Let's overcome Barmaley” (1943) and “Bibigon” (1945).

From 1938 until the end of his life, Korney Chukovsky lived in Moscow and at his dacha in Peredelkino, near Moscow. He left the capital only during the Great Patriotic War, from October 1941 to 1943, evacuating to Tashkent.

In Moscow, Chukovsky published children's fairy tales "The Stolen Sun" (1945), "Bibigon" (1945), "Thanks to Aibolit" (1955), "Fly in the Bath" (1969). For children of primary school age, Chukovsky retold the ancient Greek myth of Perseus and translated English folk songs ("Barabek", "Jenny", "Kotausi and Mausi" and others). In Chukovsky's retelling, children became acquainted with "The Adventures of Baron Munchausen" by Erich Raspe, "Robinson Crusoe" by Daniel Defoe, and "The Little Rag" by James Greenwood. Chukovsky translated Kipling's fairy tales, works by Mark Twain ("Tom Sawyer" and "Huckleberry Finn"), Gilbert Chesterton, O. Henry ("Kings and Cabbages", stories).

Devoting a lot of time to literary translation, Chukovsky wrote the research work “The Art of Translation” (1936), later revised into “High Art” (1941), expanded editions of which were published in 1964 and 1968.

Fascinated by English-language literature, Chukovsky explored the detective genre, which was gaining momentum in the first half of the 20th century. He read a lot of detective stories, copied out especially good passages from them, and “collected” methods of murder. He was the first in Russia to talk about the emerging phenomenon of mass culture, citing as an example the detective genre in literature and cinema in the article “Nat Pinkerton and Modern Literature” (1908).

Korney Chukovsky was a historian and researcher of the work of the poet Nikolai Nekrasov. He owns the books “Stories about Nekrasov” (1930) and “The Mastery of Nekrasov” (1952), published dozens of articles about the Russian poet, and found hundreds of Nekrasov’s lines banned by censorship. Articles about Vasily Sleptsov, Nikolai Uspensky, Avdotya Panayeva, Alexander Druzhinin are devoted to the era of Nekrasov.

Treating language as a living being, Chukovsky in 1962 wrote a book “Alive as Life” about the Russian language, in which he described several problems of modern speech, the main disease of which he called “clericalism” - a word invented by Chukovsky, denoting the contamination of the language with bureaucratic cliches.

The famous and recognized writer Korney Chukovsky, as a thinking person, did not accept many things in Soviet society. In 1958, Chukovsky was the only Soviet writer to congratulate Boris Pasternak on being awarded the Nobel Prize. He was one of the first to discover Solzhenitsyn, the first in the world to write an admiring review of One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, and gave the writer shelter when he fell into disgrace. In 1964, Chukovsky worked in defense of the poet Joseph Brodsky, who was put on trial for “parasitism.”

In 1957, Korney Chukovsky was awarded the academic degree of Doctor of Philology, and in 1962 - the honorary title of Doctor of Literature from Oxford University.

Chukovsky was awarded the Order of Lenin, three Orders of the Red Banner of Labor and medals. In 1962, he was awarded the Lenin Prize for his book “The Mastery of Nekrasov.”

Korney Chukovsky died in Moscow on October 28, 1969. The writer is buried at the Peredelkinskoye cemetery.

On May 25, 1903, Chukovsky married Maria Borisovna Goldfeld (1880-1955). The Chukovsky couple had four children - Nikolai, Lydia, Boris and Maria. Eleven-year-old Maria died in 1931 from tuberculosis, Boris died in 1942 near Moscow during the Great Patriotic War.

Chukovsky's eldest son Nikolai (1904-1965) was also a writer. He is the author of biographical stories about James Cook, Jean La Perouse, Ivan Kruzenshtern, the novel "Baltic Sky" about the defenders of besieged Leningrad, psychological stories and short stories, translations.

Daughter Lydia (1907-1996) - writer and human rights activist, author of the story "Sofya Petrovna" (1939-1940, published in 1988), which is a contemporary testimony about the tragic events of 1937, works about Russian writers, memoirs about Anna Akhmatova, and also works on the theory and practice of editorial art.

The material was prepared based on information from open sources.

Writer, translator, storyteller and publicist. In his family he raised two more writers - Nikolai and Lydia Chukovsky. For many years he remains the most published children's writer in Russia. For example, in 2015, 132 of his books and brochures were published with a total circulation of almost two and a half million copies.

Childhood and youth

Korney Chukovsky was born in 1882. He was born in St. Petersburg. Korney Chukovsky's real name at birth is Nikolai Korneychukov. Then he decided to take a pseudonym, under which almost all of his works were written.

His father was a hereditary honorary citizen whose name was Emmanuel Levenson. The mother of the future writer Ekaterina Korneychukova was a peasant woman, and ended up in the Levensons’ house as a servant. The marriage of the parents of the hero of our article was not officially formalized, since before that it would have been necessary to baptize the father, who was Jewish by religion. However, they still lived together for about three years.

It is noteworthy that Korney Chukovsky was not their only child. Before him, the couple had a daughter, Maria. Soon after the birth of his son, Levenson left his common-law wife, marrying a woman from his circle. Almost immediately after this he moved to Baku. Chukovsky's mother and children were forced to leave for Odessa.

It was in this city that Korney Chukovsky spent his childhood; for a short time he went to Nikolaev with his mother and sister. From the age of five, Nikolai went to kindergarten, which was run by Madame Bekhteeva. As the writer himself later recalled, they mostly drew pictures and marched there.

For some time Kolya studied at the Odessa gymnasium, where his classmate was the future traveler and writer Boris Zhitkov. A sincere friendship even began between them. However, the hero of our article failed to graduate from high school; he was expelled from the fifth grade, as he himself claimed, due to his low origin. What actually happened is unknown; no documents relating to that period have survived. Chukovsky described the events of that time in his autobiographical story entitled “The Silver Coat of Arms.”

Neither Nikolai nor his sister Maria had a patronymic name in the birth certificate, since they were illegitimate. Therefore, in various pre-revolutionary documents one can find the variants Vasilievich, Emmanuilovich, Stepanovich, Manuilovich and even Emelyanovich.

When Korneychukov began writing, he took a pseudonym for himself, to which he eventually added the fictitious patronymic Ivanovich. After the revolution, the name Korney Ivanovich Chukovsky became his official name.

Personal life

In 1903, Chukovsky married Maria Goldfeld, who was two years older than him. They had four children. In 1904, Nikolai was born. He translated poetry and prose and married translator Maria Nikolaevna. The couple had a daughter, Natalya, in 1925. She became a microbiologist, Honored Scientist of Russia, Doctor of Medical Sciences. In 1933, Nikolai was born, who worked as a communications engineer, and in 1943, Dmitry was born, in the future the husband of 18-time USSR tennis champion Anna Dmitrieva. In total, the children of Korney Chukovsky gave him five grandchildren.

In 1907, the hero of our article had a daughter, Lydia, a famous Soviet dissident and writer. Her most significant work is considered to be “Notes about Anna Akhmatova,” which record her conversations with the poetess that Chukovskaya had for many years. Lydia was married twice. The first time was for the literary historian and literary critic Caesar Volpe, and then for the popularizer of science and mathematician Matvey Bronstein.

Thanks to Lydia, Korney Ivanovich has a granddaughter, a chemist and literary critic, winner of the Alexander Solzhenitsyn Prize. She died in 1996.

In 1910, the writer had a son, Boris, who died in 1941 shortly after the start of the Great Patriotic War. He was killed while returning from reconnaissance, not far from the Borodino field. He is survived by his son Boris, a cinematographer.

In 1920, Chukovsky gave birth to his second daughter, Maria, who became the heroine of most of his children's stories and poems. Her father himself often called her Murochka. At the age of 9 she fell ill with tuberculosis. Two years later, the girl died; until her death, the writer fought for his daughter’s life. In 1930, she was taken to Crimea, for some time she remained in the famous children's bone-tuberculosis sanatorium, and then lived with Chukovsky in a rented apartment. In November 1931 she died. For a long time her grave was considered lost. According to recent research, it has been established that, most likely, she was buried at the Alupka cemetery. The burial itself was even discovered.

Among the writer’s close relatives, one should also remember his nephew, mathematician Vladimir Rokhlin, who studied algebraic geometry and measure theory.

In journalism

Until the October Revolution, Korney Chukovsky, whose biography is given in this article, was primarily engaged in journalism. In 1901, he began writing notes and publications in Odessa News. He was brought into literature by his friend Vladimir Zhabotinsky, who was his guarantor at the wedding.

Almost immediately after his marriage, Chukovsky went to London as a correspondent, tempted by the high fee. He learned the language on his own using a self-instruction manual and went to England with his young wife. At the same time, Chukovsky was published in Southern Review, as well as in several Kyiv publications. However, fees from Russia did not arrive regularly, living in London was difficult, and my pregnant wife had to be sent back to Odessa.

The hero of our article himself returned to his homeland in 1904, soon plunging into the events of the first Russian revolution. He twice came to the battleship Potemkin, which was in the grip of an uprising, and took letters from the sailors to their loved ones.

At the same time, he takes part in the publication of a satirical magazine together with such celebrities as Fyodor Sologub, Alexander Kuprin, Teffi. After four issues were published, the publication was closed for disrespect for the autocracy. Soon the lawyers managed to achieve an acquittal, but Chukovsky still spent more than a week under arrest.

Meeting Repin

An important stage in the biography of Korney Chukovsky is his acquaintance with the artist Ilya Repin and publicist Vladimir Korolenko. In 1906, the hero of our article becomes close to them in the Finnish town of Kuokkala.

It was Chukovsky who managed to convince Repin to take his literary works seriously and publish a book of memoirs called “Distant Close.” In total, Chukovsky spent about ten years in Kuokkala. The famous handwritten humorous almanac “Chukokkala” appeared there; the name was suggested by Repin. Chukovsky led him until the very last days of his life.

During that period of his creative biography, the hero of our article was engaged in translations. He publishes adaptations of Whitman's poems, which increases his popularity among writers. In addition, he turns into a fairly influential critic who criticizes contemporary fiction writers and supports the work of futurists. In Kuokkala, Chukovsky meets Mayakovsky.

In 1916, he went to England as part of the State Duma delegation. Shortly after this trip, Paterson's book about the Jewish Legion, which fought as part of the British army, was published. The preface to this edition is written by the hero of our article; he also edits the book.

After the October Revolution, Chukovsky continued to engage in literary criticism, releasing his two most famous books in this field - “Akhmatova and Mayakovsky” and “The Book about Alexander Blok”. However, in the conditions of Soviet reality, engaging in criticism turns out to be a thankless task. He left the criticism, which he later regretted more than once.

Literary criticism

As modern researchers note, Chukovsky had a real talent for literary criticism. This can be judged by his essays on Balmont, Chekhov, Gorky, Blok, Bryusov, Merezhkovsky and many others, which were published before the Bolsheviks came to power. In 1908, the collection “From Chekhov to the Present Day” was even published, which went through three reprints.

In 1917, Chukovsky began a fundamental work about his favorite poet Nikolai Nekrasov. He manages to release the first complete collection of his poems, work on which he finishes only by 1926. In 1952, he published the monograph “Nekrasov’s Mastery,” which is significant for understanding the entire work of this poet. For it, Chukovsky was awarded the Lenin Prize.

It was after 1917 that it was possible to publish a large number of Nekrasov’s poems, which had previously been prohibited due to tsarist censorship. Chukovsky's merit lies in the fact that he put into circulation approximately a quarter of the texts written by Nekrasov. In the 1920s, it was he who discovered the prose texts of the famous poet. These are "The Thin Man" and "The Life and Adventures of Tikhon Trosnikov."

It is noteworthy that Chukovsky studied not only Nekrasov, but many writers of the 19th century. Among them were Dostoevsky, Chekhov, Sleptsov.

Works for children

The passion for fairy tales and poems for children, which made Chukovsky so popular, came to him relatively late. By that time he was already a famous and accomplished literary critic; many knew and loved Korney Chukovsky’s books.

Only in 1916, the hero of our article wrote his first fairy tale, “Crocodile,” and published a collection called “Fir Trees.” In 1923, the famous fairy tales “Cockroach” and “Moidodyr” were published, and a year later “Barmaley.

"Moidodyr" by Korney Chukovsky was written two years before publication. Already in 1927, a cartoon was made based on this plot, and later animated films were released in 1939 and 1954.

In “Moidodyr” by Korney Chukovsky, the narrative is told from the perspective of a little boy, from whom all his things suddenly begin to run away. The situation is explained by a washbasin named Moidodyr, who explains to the child that all things run away from him only because he is dirty. By order of the powerful Moidodyr, soap and brushes are thrown at the boy and forcibly washed.

The boy breaks free and runs out into the street, being chased by a washcloth, which is eaten by a walking Crocodile. Afterwards, the Crocodile threatens to eat the child himself if he does not start taking care of himself. The poetic tale ends with a hymn to purity.

Classics of children's literature

The poems of Korney Chukovsky, written during this period, become classics of children's literature. In 1924, he wrote “The Clapping Fly” and “The Miracle Tree.” In 1926, “Fedorino’s Mountain” by Korney Chukovsky appeared. This work is similar in concept to "Moidodyr". In this fairy tale by Korney Chukovsky, the main character is Fedor’s grandmother. All the dishes and kitchen utensils run away from her because she didn’t take care of them, didn’t wash them on time and didn’t clean her house. There are many famous film adaptations of the works of Korney Chukovsky. A cartoon of the same name was made based on this fairy tale in 1974 by Natalia Chervinskaya.

In 1929, the writer wrote a fairy tale in verse about Doctor Aibolit. Korney Chukovsky chose as the main character of his work a doctor who goes to Africa to treat sick animals on the Limpopo River. In addition to the cartoons by Natalia Chervinskaya in 1973 and David Cherkassky in 1984, this fairy tale by Korney Chukovsky was made into a film by Vladimir Nemolyaev based on a script by Evgeny Schwartz in 1938. And in 1966, the comedy arthouse adventure musical film by Rolan Bykov “Aibolit-66” was released.

Renunciation of one's own works

Children's books by Korney Chukovsky of this period were published in large print runs, but were not always considered to meet the tasks of Soviet pedagogy, for which they were constantly criticized. Among editors and literary critics, the term “Chukovism” even arose - this is how most of Korney Chukovsky’s poems were designated. The writer agrees with the criticism. On the pages of Literaturnaya Gazeta, he renounces all his children's works, declaring that he intends to begin a new stage of his work by writing a collection of poems, “Merry Collective Farm,” but never finished it.

By coincidence, his youngest daughter fell ill with tuberculosis almost simultaneously with his renunciation of his works in Literaturnaya Gazeta. The poet himself considered her fatal illness to be retribution.

Memoirs and war tales

In the 30s, a new hobby appeared in Chukovsky’s life. He studies the child psyche, especially how babies acquire speech. As a literary critic and poet, this is of extreme interest to Korney Ivanovich. His observations of children and their verbal creativity are collected in the book “From Two to Five.” Korney Chukovsky, this psychological and journalistic study published in 1933, begins with a chapter on children's language, giving numerous examples of incredible word combinations that kids use. He calls them “stupid nonsense.” At the same time, he talks about the amazing talent of children to perceive a huge number of new elements and words.

Literary scholars have come to the conclusion that his research in the field of children's word formation has become a serious contribution to the development of Russian linguistics.

In the 1930s, the Soviet writer and poet Korney Chukovsky wrote memoirs, which he did not stop working on until the end of his life. They are published posthumously under the title "Diaries 1901-1969".

When the Great Patriotic War began, the writer was evacuated to Tashkent. In 1942, he wrote a fairy tale in verse, “Let’s Defeat Barmaley!” In essence, this is a military chronicle of the confrontation between the small country of Aibolitia and the animal kingdom of Ferocity, which is filled with scenes of violence, ruthlessness towards the enemy, and calls for revenge. At that moment, just such a work was in demand by readers and the country's leadership. But when in 1943 there was a turning point in the war, outright persecution began against the fairy tale itself and its author. It was even banned in 1944 and was not republished for more than 50 years. Nowadays, most critics admit that “Let’s defeat Barmaley!” - one of Chukovsky’s main creative failures.

In the 1960s, the hero of our article plans to publish a retelling of the Bible for children. The work was complicated by the anti-religious position of the Soviet authorities that existed at that time. For example, censors demanded that the words "Jews" and "God" not be mentioned in this work. As a result, the wizard Yahweh was invented. In 1968, the book was finally published by the publishing house "Children's Literature" under the title "The Tower of Babel and Other Ancient Legends."

But the book never went on sale. At the last moment, the entire circulation was confiscated and destroyed. As one of its authors, Valentin Berestov, later argued, the reason was the cultural revolution that began in China. The Red Guards criticized Chukovsky for polluting children's heads with “religious nonsense.”

Last years

Chukovsky spent his last years at his dacha in Peredelkino. He was a universal favorite, receiving all kinds of literary awards. At the same time, he managed to maintain contacts with dissidents - Pavel Litvinov, Alexander Solzhenitsyn. In addition, one of his daughters became a prominent human rights activist and dissident.

He constantly invited local children to his dacha, read poetry for them, talked about all sorts of things, and invited celebrities, among whom were poets, writers, pilots and famous artists. Those who attended these meetings in Peredelkino still remember them with kindness and warmth, even though many years have passed since then.

Korney Ivanovich Chukovsky died of viral hepatitis in 1969 in the same place, in Peredelkino, where he lived most of his life. He was 87 years old. He was buried in the local cemetery.

Korney Ivanovich Chukovsky

Biography

Korney Ivanovich Chukovsky(at birth given the name Nikolai Vasilyevich Korneychukov) is a Russian poet, famous children's writer, translator, publicist, critic and literary critic. His children Nikolai Korneevich Chukovsky and Lidiya Korneevna Chukovskaya are also famous writers.

Childhood

On March 19, 1882 (new style 31), Nikolai Korneychukov was born in St. Petersburg. Some consider his date of birth to be April 1, which is due to incorrect translation of dates to the new style.

Nikolai was “illegitimate,” which caused him to suffer a lot. Mother Ekaterina Osipovna Korneychukova was a Poltava peasant woman and worked in the house of Emmanuel Solomonovich Levenson. Their family lived in St. Petersburg for about three years, they already had a child - daughter Maria or Marusya. After Nikolai's birth, his father married a woman from high society, and his mother moved to Odessa. In Odessa, he studied at the gymnasium until the fifth grade, from which he was expelled due to his low origin. The autobiographical story “The Silver Coat of Arms” describes this period of his life.

According to the metric, he and his sister did not have a middle name. His patronymic “Vasilievich” was given by the name of his godfather, and his sister used the patronymic “Emmanuilovna”. He wrote all his works under the pseudonym “Korney Chukovsky”. After the revolution, the pseudonym “Korney Ivanovich Chukovsky” became his legal name. All his children - sons Nikolai and Boris, daughters Lydia and Maria, after the revolution bore the surname Chukovsky and, accordingly, the patronymic Korneevich.

Youth

Chukovsky began writing children's literature after becoming a famous critic. The first collection “The Christmas Tree” and the fairy tale “Crocodile” were published in 1916. Some of the most famous fairy tales, “The Cockroach” and “Moidodyr,” were written in 1923.

Korney Chukovsky was also interested in issues of the child’s psyche and methods of teaching speech. He outlined all his thoughts on this topic in the 1933 book “From Two to Five.” Most readers know him only as a children's writer.

30s in the life of the writer

Among critics, the term “Chukovism” appears. This leads to the fact that at the end of 1929 Chukovsky publishes a letter renouncing fairy tales, and he also promises to write a collection “Merry Collective Farm”. Renunciation was difficult for him; he never wrote the collection. During these years, his youngest daughter Murochka left his life, and his daughter Lydia’s husband was shot.

Beginning in 1930, Chukovsky began to engage in translations. In 1936, his book “The Art of Translation” was published, later republished under the title “High Art”. Also at this time he was translating into Russian the works of R. Kipling, M. Twain, O. Wilde. At this time he begins to write memoirs. They were published posthumously under the title "Diaries 1901 - 1969".

Maturity

In the 60s, Korney Chukovsky began working on a retelling of the Bible for children. Several writers worked on this book, but all texts were edited by Korney Chukovsky. Due to the anti-religious position of the authorities, the word God was replaced by “Wizard Yahweh.” In 1968, the Bible was published, and it was called “The Tower of Babel and Other Ancient Legends,” but all copies were destroyed. The book was published only in 1990.

Last years

During his life, Chukovsky became a laureate of several state awards, a holder of orders, and gained nationwide love. Nevertheless, he communicated with dissidents. He spent his last years at his dacha in Peredelkino, communicating with local children, reading poetry, and arranging meetings with famous people. Korney Ivanovich died of viral hepatitis on October 28, 1969. His museum is now open in Peredelkino.

“Chukovsky The roots of the vaunted talent are 2 times longer than a telephone pole” - this is how he described the future author of the most popular children's poems Korney Chukovsky his friend Vlad Jabotinsky.

They say that the children's writer Korney Ivanovich Chukovsky did not really like to celebrate birthdays, sometimes he did not even go down to guests, although he accepted gifts with joy.

Fatherlessness

One of the things that upset Chukovsky all his life was his origin. After all, his real name and surname are Nikolai Korneychukov. But there was a problem with the middle name. Kolya Korneychukov was the illegitimate son of peasant woman Ekaterina Korneichukova and Emmanuel Levenson. The rich gentleman “lived” with his servants for about three years, gave birth to two children - Marusya and Kolya - and married a woman of noble birth. Although the father did not officially abandon his son and daughter, he did not give them his first and last name. Therefore, in different documents, Kolya Korneychukov’s patronymic sounded in different ways: he was Vasilyevich, and Stepanovich, and Emmanuilovich, and Manuilovich, and even Emelyanovich.

In his “Diary” Chukovsky wrote: “It seemed to me... that I was the only one - illegal, that everyone was whispering behind my back and that when I showed someone my documents, everyone internally began to spit on me...

Portrait of Korney Chukovsky, painted by I. E. Repin, 1910. Photo: Commons.wikimedia.org

When the children talked about their fathers, grandfathers, and grandmothers, I just blushed, hesitated, lied, confused.” In the end, to stop the confusion, Nikolai took a different name, came up with a middle name and a new last name. By the way, according to some evidence, Chukovsky nevertheless met with his father several times and even once brought him, already a very old man, to the Finnish village of Kuokkala, where he then lived with his family. True, the new father did not stay away for a long time - Chukovsky lost his temper and literally pushed the biological father out the door, and the children were forever forbidden to mention their grandfather’s name.

Chukovsky began writing children's poetry when he was already a seasoned critic. He could not even imagine that simple quatrains would forever eclipse all his previous and subsequent serious works. Sometimes the writer disagreed seriously about this: “...I am secretly jealous of my adult books for children’s books. I am sure that my book about Gorky is better than “Moidodyr” and the book about Nekrasov is better than “Crocodile”. But no one believes this. “Crocodile” sold 250,000 copies, but “Nekrasov” didn’t sell even two thousand!!! ...I am ready to punch with my fists those mothers who, with a slobbering smile, tell me that their Tamara knows my “Confusion” by heart. “And you,” I ask, “do you know my book about Walt Whitman by heart?” - "About what?" - “About Walt Whitman.” - “Do you also write for adults?” - Bastards!

Erotic fly

Despite the childishness, in the works of Korney Chukovsky more than once “skilled” guardians of the Soviet regime found “forbidden elements”. For example, the book “Mukhin's Wedding” was banned. "Gublit ( state censorship body of that time. - Ed. ) banned me from the book “A Fly’s Wedding” on the grounds that the fly in the picture seemed to be placed too close to the spider - and this could evoke erotic thoughts in the child!” - Chukovsky himself wrote about this stupid incident.

Osip Mandelstam, Korney Chukovsky, Benedikt Livshits and Yuri Annenkov, farewell to the front. Random photo of Karl Bulla. 1914 Photo: Commons.wikimedia.org

And I didn’t like the same “Crocodile” that “walked the streets” Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya- she spotted an “anti-Soviet element” in the alligator. Although Chukovsky, when he composed the poem, did not even think about anything like that. “My little son got sick,” recalled Korney Ivanovich. “I was taking him home on the train and, in order to somehow calm his pain, I began to tell him under the rhythmic roar of the train: “Once upon a time there was a crocodile. He walked the streets...” But “The Cockroach” was considered the most acutely satirical work of the poet. And although the fairy tale was written in 1922, when Stalin’s power had not yet gained its power, the lines “The animals submitted to the mustachioed man. (Let him fail, damned one!)” sounded prophetic and topical.

By the way, in the late 1990s it became known that Chukovsky wrote to the “mustachioed prototype.” A letter was published in one of the Russian magazines where Korney Ivanovich complained to the leader of the peoples that during the war children were left without education, without the support of their parents, that they had gone wild, began to rob and steal, and proposed to employ such children who had gotten out of hand in agricultural work. labor. Then they attacked the writer and accused him of being hard-hearted. In fact, Chukovsky adored children, but believed that they needed to be raised correctly. At his dacha in Peredelkino he constantly organized “creative meetings” with children and invited famous people for them.

Korney Chukovsky walks with children near the children's library in Peredelkino. 1959 Photo: RIA Novosti / Semenov

Chukovsky never sympathized with the Soviet regime, and the government did not really welcome him. Moreover, Chukovsky's daughter, Lydia, became a dissident, and her husband, outstanding physicist Matvey Bronstein, was called an enemy of the people and executed in 1938. These were dark years for the Chukovskys. The family believed that Matvey Bronstein was alive for two whole years, because they were “given” a sentence: “10 years without the right to correspondence.” And so Korney Ivanovich wrote letters asking for mercy for his already executed son-in-law, and his friends asked for him - Marshak, Landau, Mandelstam, Ioffe. But the only thing they achieved was a note: “to compensate L.K. Chukovskaya for the cost of the binoculars seized during the search on August 1, 1937”...

According to the recollections of those close to him, he always had a heightened sense of justice. Korney Ivanovich died in 1969 from viral hepatitis. And before his death, he made a list of those whom he would not want to see at his funeral...

Anecdote about Chukovsky

Korney Ivanovich Chukovsky comes to Lenin.

Vladimir Ilyich! I wrote a poem here. I would like to publish.

- Read, Korney Ivanovich.

- Fly, Fly, clattering, gilded belly, The fly walked across the field, The fly found the money. Mucha went to the market and bought a samovar...

- Wait, Comrade Chukovsky! Why to the market and not to the cooperative? Disorder. Rewrite immediately!

Chukovsky comes to Stalin.

Caricatures of K. Chukovsky performed by V. Mayakovsky. 1915 Photo: Commons.wikimedia.org

Joseph Vissarionovich! I wrote a poem here, I would like to publish it.

- Read it, Korney Ivanovich.

- Fly, Fly, clattering, gilded belly, The fly walked across the field, The fly found some money...

- Eh, stop, Comrade Chukovsky. We have money with a portrait of the leader. Who could have thrown them onto the field? Rewrite!

Chukovsky comes to Khrushchev.

Nikita Sergeevich...

- Read, Korney Ivanovich.

- Fly, Fly, clattering, gilded belly, The fly went across the field...

- Stop it, Comrade Chukovsky! If everyone tramples our fields, the corn will never grow. Rewrite this place.

Chukovsky comes to Brezhnev.

Well, read it, Korney Ivanovich.

- Fly, Fly, clattering, gilded belly...

- Wait, Comrade Chukovsky! In our country, gold is not held in high esteem, all citizens dress very modestly, do not keep bullion at home, and you have a fly with a whole gilded belly. Rewrite.

Chukovsky comes to Andropov.

Fly, fly, click...

- What did you say about the Central Committee?!

Born March 31 (New Style) 1882Korney Ivanovich Chukovsky, the most published children's writer in Russia. Meanwhile, the attitude of the Soviet government towards the writer’s fairy tales, on which more than one generation was brought up, was far from unambiguous.

Low origin

Nikolai Korneychukov (this is the name given to Korney Ivanovich at birth) was the illegitimate son of a servant and her employer; he received his surname from his mother. The father left his illegitimate family soon after the birth of Nikolai (although his daughter Maria had been born earlier), and the mother and her children were forced to move to Odessa, where the future writer spent his childhood. Young Chukovsky was expelled from the Odessa gymnasium when he entered the fifth grade. In his autobiographical story, he explained this by low origin (came into force in 1887). Illegal birth also explained Chukovsky’s lack of a patronymic in the registry register and the different “real” patronymics in later biographies. For example, he was called Vasilyevich after his godfather. After the revolution, the writer’s pseudonym “Korney Ivanovich Chukovsky” became the official name.

K.I. Chukovsky in London

Literary critic

Chukovsky ended up in literature thanks to a friend he had been close to since high school. In 1901 he began writing articles for Odessa News. At the age of 21, he married a bourgeois Maria Borisovna Goldfeld, who was two years older than the writer. A business trip to England soon followed, since Chukovsky was the only employee of Odessa News who spoke English. Life in London allowed the writer to become thoroughly familiar with English literature. Returning to Russia, Chukovsky was completely immersed in the revolutionary events of 1905 and even spent nine days under arrest. Having started out as a journalist and reviewer, Chukovsky remained one of the most influential literary critics in Russia in the first decades of the 20th century. He did a lot for writers, provided assistance, and did his best. Chukovsky was also a wonderful linguist.

K.I. Chukovsky reads his fairy tale to Murochka

Children's writer

Korney Ivanovich began writing for children quite late. Most of his famous works were created during the short 11-year period in the life of his beloved youngest daughter Murochka. So, for example, when Masha was terminally ill with bone tuberculosis in 1929, a book appeared about Aibolit, a wonderful doctor who would certainly come and heal everyone. Soviet children and their parents were literally in love with Chukovsky's children's poems. Despite this, at the instigation of N.K. Krupskaya, Korney Ivanovich’s children’s works were harshly criticized as not corresponding to the ideological education of children in the spirit of class struggle. A popular favorite and winner of a number of state awards, Chukovsky, in recent years living in Peredelkino near Moscow, regularly organized get-togethers with local children, read poetry to them, and invited famous people. Korney Ivanovich passed away on October 28, 1969.